I’ve been thinking a lot about how to tell this story.
The story about an HGTV designer that throws a wing competition. That’s the simplest way to tell it and I’m sure it’s a headline that’ll get a lot of people to click, but that’s really not the story.
The real story is that everything I’ve done over the past several years has been about Memphis. And yes, people know me because I won HGTV Design Star and as an interior designer, but if you really look at my career, every opportunity I’ve had since then has come back to this city. I chose to shoot my winning HGTV show Reno My Rental in Memphis. I’ve consistently used my platform to tell Memphis stories, support Memphis businesses, advocate for our creatives and remind people that Memphis is far more than the stereotypes that most people associate with it.
So really and truly, Wing Wars is really just the next chapter of that work. As a designer, I think about how spaces shape people and how people shape spaces. But I’ve realized over the years that culture shapes cities, just as much as architecture does. If you want people to fall in love with the city, then you have to create experiences that celebrate who they are. That’s really where Wing Wars came from.
